FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT MORTGAGE FRAUD - PAGE 5

Brenda Liberti has news for anyone in the market for a home: "Mortgage fraud is alive and well." Liberti heads the regional office of the Florida Department of Banking and Finance in West Palm Beach. From that office, she and three other investigators handle consumer complaints and occasionally drop into lenders' and brokers' offices to examine their books. A similar office exists for Broward County in Fort Lauderdale. Liberti says her office is a first line of protection for consumers, but not enough people use it. "We can tell a consumer if the business is licensed, if it has any complaints against it, if there are any outstanding disciplinary actions," she said.

The U.S. Attorney's Office announced Tuesday the indictment of four defendants, mostly from Palm Beach County, on mortgage fraud charges in the financing of five properties in Miami-Dade County. Carlos Cano, 53, of Delray Beach; Robyn L. Colon, 34, and Jose L. Colon, 52, both of Boynton Beach; and Maria Lozada, 40, of Miami, were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and eight counts of substantive bank fraud. The four allegedly defrauded three banking institutions and other lenders of more than $6 million in loans.

A Palm Beach Gardens attorney whom federal and state investigators allege fraudulently diverted loan proceeds into personal accounts has pled guilty to mortgage fraud conspiracy, said officials with the U.S. Attorney 's Southern District Office in Miami. Investigators said Joseph Miller was recruited by Jason Vitulano of Boca Raton, a former branch manager for Top Dot Mortgage, to participate in a mortgage scheme that submitted loan applications with greatly inflated income and asset figures to numerous lenders.

A former Dallas Cowboys linebacker who played on three Super Bowl championship teams was indicted Tuesday with two other men on federal charges alleging $2.5 million in mortgage fraud in the upscale Versailles neighborhood in Wellington . Former NFL player Godfrey Myles, 42, of Miami; Patrick Brinson, 34, of Miami, and David Lam, 42, a Parkland real estate broker, were charged in an 11-count indictment with conspiracy to commit mail and wire...

Mortgage fraud, including grossly inflating the price of a home for a loan, could mean up to 15 years in state prison under a measure that cleared the Senate on Tuesday. "Mortgage fraud hurts all Floridians," said Sen. Gwen Margolis, D-Sunny Isles Beach, the bill's sponsor. "Not just the lenders or borrowers caught in the deceptive web, but entire neighborhoods as homes are abandoned because of foreclosures, and the integrity of the financial system as a whole." In 2007, Florida ranked first in the nation in mortgage fraud and second in foreclosures.

With Wall Street reeling from turmoil in the housing market, federal officials in South Florida on Tuesday announced results of a yearlong effort to combat the region's mortgage fraud epidemic. Since September 2007, federal prosecutors have charged 112 individuals for frauds involving loans worth more than $176 million, U.S. Attorney R. Alexander Acosta said. According to industry groups, Florida leads the nation in mortgage fraud, accounting for nearly one quarter of all fraudulent loans.

Mortgage fraud incidents hit an all-time high, rising 26 percent from 2007 to 2008, with Florida ranking second in the nation for the number of reported cases, according to a report released Monday by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute. Florida topped the list of states with the most loans containing fraudulent information or misrepresentations in the first and second quarters of 2008, followed by California and New York, the report found. But for the year, Rhode Island edged out Florida for the state with the highest mortgage fraud rate.

The current economic crisis could mean tougher sentences for fraudsters who caused untold millions of dollars in losses in South Florida's real estate market. A Fort Lauderdale federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Coral Springs man to eight years in prison for orchestrating a $12 million mortgage fraud in Broward County. In sentencing Anthony Dehaney, U.S. District Judge William Dimitrouleas went beyond the five-year prison term recommended by prosecutors, saying he wanted to deter other people from trying to make "quick easy money" through real estate fraud.

There are lots of proposed remedies to prevent another mortgage catastrophe like the one we're going through now. Most of the suggestions I've seen won't fix the loopholes that allowed so many borrowers to take on mortgage loans they couldn't afford. But there is one solution that may help stem fraud in the mortgage industry, and it could reduce the number of unscrupulous or unlicensed brokers and loan officers who move from state to state preying on borrowers. The Conference of State Bank Supervisors and the American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators have launched the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System, which is designed to help state licensing officials keep track of individuals and companies responsible for arranging mortgage loans.

While the worst of the mortgage crisis may be behind us, mortgage fraud in South Florida continues to grow. The Fort Lauderdale-Miami area, the nation's ninth-largest metro area, had the third-highest number of reports of mortgage loan fraud during the 2011 fiscal year, according to the Annual Mortgage Fraud Report released by LexisNexis on Wednesday. The South Florida area now accounts for 7 percent of all mortgage fraud, up from 5 percent in 2010. "We're the white-collar crime capital of the nation," said Ken Thomas, an independent bank analyst and economist, who was surprised that South Florida wasn't ranked higher for mortgage fraud.